


Avatar Ty Lee

by LightsaberWeildingDalek, RueLukas



Series: Backing up world building [4]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 14:13:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17081822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LightsaberWeildingDalek/pseuds/LightsaberWeildingDalek, https://archiveofourown.org/users/RueLukas/pseuds/RueLukas





	Avatar Ty Lee

Avatar Ty lee

Also you know Airbender!Ty Lee?  
Why'd no body go the step further and say Avatar!Ty Lee?  
I’m good. Because for you kill aang for ty lee to be avatar, it’s got to do a full round swoop to round the cycle to get back to airbenders in a very short period of time  
100 years. Minus 14, Ty Lee's nominal age, so about 86 years. 87 divided by 3 (water earth fire) is 29. Let's say that Aang was killed in the Air Nomad massacre or one of those other excuses authors use to get Avatar!Zuko/Katara/Toph, the water tribe avatar was born in the south, and never found an earth bending teacher, dieing before the age of 16, and either the earth kingdom or the Fire nation born avatars live a full-ish life fighting the war, and the other being killed by the fire nation as well.  
Leading to Ty Lee. Yay.  
We can have more fun with the avatars than that? The next avatar is a shy southern girl. She sometimes flinches at things she’s never seen. But she’s a woman and the war is starting and so she is taught to heal, even though seeing men with deep burns makes her want to scream. She hates all of this. She never practices her bending because all of it makes her thing of the smell of sizzling human flesh. She throws herself off the cliffs a week before her 14th birthday, where her parents are going to reveal her engagement to a man thrice her age.  
That's honestly almost as bad as the water avatar I can up with when I was like 11.  
*bad as in tragic, dear Stars I only just realized how that could be taken, I wasn't saying you were being childish.  
The next avatar is a street kid in ba sing se. Unlike the last avatar, he enjoys his bending, the ability to make a hollow to sleep in having saved his life from the watch and the winter multiple times. He’s nine, when he accidentally airbends to catch himself falling off a roof. He spends the next few minutes shaking and growing a large fear of heights. The boy is illiterate and uneducated- he thinks that if he goes to the authorities he will have these abilities taken away. He works out basics of how to do all the bending he knows, and starts playing vigilante. The group of vigilantes are discussed for years after they stop. Head to toe in black, always a bender, fighting like they learned on the street. There are even rumours that there was an air bender in the group, that could never be proven. When the avatar is in his mid-30’s , the first army marches on ba sing se. By this time he’s off the streets, in a pokey flat and a young daughter who’s mother ran off. He is conscripted as an earthbender. He is stationed on the outer walls of ba sing se. He is terrified, and disobeys orders to start climbing down on the outside of the wall. A firebending sniper picks him off halfway down.

The fire avatar is a country hick. A country hick with a title, but still a country hick. His parents can’t have any more children- while on deployment an earthbender got vindictive- and so need their son to inherit. He firebends just shy of five. In a better world he would be designated a future powerful bender and sent to the Imperial Academy. But those children have been seen in the province before. Alien to their parents, alien to their lands, fanatically loyal to the crown, and die very young. No one get heirs from a firebending child. So they hide it. The father teaches basic forms to suppress and control. The child learns that bending , standing out, is bad. So when climbing down the cliffs in the cave, they have an unexplainable panic attack and dig a cave into the rock with their bare hands, they don’t tell anyone. They enjoy bending, but it has been nailed into them that letting people see will have them taken away and hurt. On the high obsidian cliffs, and deep in the caverns and inlets, the child practiced. And when their mother and father died from an illness that swept the region, they rallied the people, helped the sick, and became a beloved leader of men. 

And then conscription for all adults on non essential roles was brought in. The normal army could not be kept on volunteers anymore. The Avatar quickly married someone who also had issues with gender (but did have the opposite genitalia) and managed to get them both out of the draft as parents. And then that child accidentally blew up their cake during a very public fifth birthday party. The child was sent to the imperial academy and the Avatar and their spouse the conscripted and separated. The Avatar was sent to the occupied territories to stop rebellions. They did their best to be kind to the people under their watch, but their supervisors saw it as converting the natives to the fire nation way of life. They got command of a small group and told to carry on the good work. The Avatar took that as requisitioning an abandoned set of earth barracks and housing the local orphans there. One of the children was a refugee from the outskirts of the foggy swamps. A water bender terrified of being caught and killed. The Avatar tried to do what their father did for the child. Enough skill to hide. But eventually the child noticed the water moving as the Avatar showed them how to move. After that the Avatar moved with the foggy swamp kid in demonstration, and the kid told the Avatar about the legends of the Avatar that had been suppressed almost entirely in the fire nation. And then one of their subordinates caught the two of them water bending. The Avatar was from one of the southernmost points of the fire nation. With all the mutual raiding over the centuries, the people there had noticeable water blood, and the tribes that lived closest sometimes had children with golden eyes. But as far as the army was concerned, the Avatar was a traitor arming the populace. But his subordinates, and the locals, loved him. So they made it look like a heart attack.  
And then we got to Ty Lee. The first airbender in five generations after a temple failure ran away with the circus 10 years before the start of the war.  
The cycle cannot be changed by mortal hands. 

Ty Lee is born the sixth of eight near identical daughters to an Island Leader in the Fire Nation. Island Leader, meaning most important nobility on a specific island. Said Island was a northern one, one of the closest to the air nomads old territory. Despite the relative height of her birth, there was nothing to really make Tai Li special in comparison to her sisters. She had the same flexibility, was taught the same martial arts past down through the family since the Island was Made, had the same gray eyes her peasant grandmother had passed down, all in all entirely unremarkable. Except for one thing. Ty Lee was born with less than a month separating her from Princess Azula. While Azula was born at the height of summer, Ty Lee was born just as the air began to cool into fall, and this close age would save Ty Lee from the monotony of just being a copy. Being a copy had its benefits in some ways. Not any parent would just offer a child to the royal family, as both personal guard and loyal playmate who can protect herself while also never being more than the princess. Being a copy means if the princess kills her, she will not be sorely missed, and her family will not be the worse for it. Ty Lee knows this, because it was explained to her. Because she will take the same classes as he princess and never do better than her, because she will train while the princess trains, and the princess will train to kill, Ty Lee will train to incapacitate her prey for her. Ty Lee knew this. Her mother told her as she left. She will only see her parents when they come to court, because she belongs to the princess now. She doesn't think the princess knew, not really. The princess was presented with many other girls. She chose two to be her friends and playmates. The other girl, Mai, has all the markings of an assassin to be. Ty Lee assumes she has those markings as well. Some sort of carelessness when it comes to life that clued the princess to her. Ty Lee wonders if the princess knows that Ty Lee and Mai were to stand beside her till she is wedded off to strengthen her older brother's political ties. She wonders how Mai, and only child, ended up being offered to this. She needs only see the girl with Prince Zuko once to realize who the girl is really for, and some part of Ty Lee is happy to know she is the one who truly stands at the princess's back. She gets to know her princess, and Mai, and Zuko. The princess is sharp, calculating, and utterly without empathy. There is no real carelessness in her, everything movement and word is weighed, consequences considered and thrown out at lightning speed. Mai is blunt, creating a dichotomy when compared to the knives and other blades she wields. She cares, almost more than she should, but her caring is tempered by an all consuming dislike for her world. The princess finds her amusing. Zuko is fragile. Zuko is strong. Zuko cares too much. Zuko doesn't weigh consequences. Zuko loves people, completely and without remorse, and it's often too much for Ty Lee to be comfortable around. She almost wishes he'd be firelord someday.  
Ty Lee learns to measure herself by what Azula sees in her. Azula sees her carefree attitude as one that could be happy killing someone as chasing a butterfly. Ty Lee strives to make it true. Azula sees her happiness around her as because of something she said or did, not because Ty Lee is safer near Azula than away. Azula can only measure what she sees and experiences. Ty Lee has worn the same mask her sister's wear since she knew she was leaving. It's almost unfair.  
Ty Lee truly airbends for the first time when she is seven years old and a guard gets handsier than one has ever attempted before. She kills him. A strike to the throats to collapse it is all it takes. Azula is positively delighted when she finds out. Ty Lee is given no punishment for it. She no longer has a guard. That comes with its own dangers.  
When Azula and Ty Lee are nine Prince Lu Ten dies on the battle field. Things move quickly after that. Ty Lee spends several nights guarding Azula's room.  
She's both surprised and not when she discovers that Azula is now second in line instead of fifth.  
Mai is sent away. The Fire Lord does not think Azula needs her anymore. Ty Lee disagrees. She's even more in need of a trained assassin than she was.  
Two years and an Agni Kai later, and Azula is first in line to the throne, Ty Lee knows that not only can she airbend, but also water bend, earth bend, and fire bend. Ry Lee is being subtly encouraged to leave. For a given word for subtle. A crown princess does not need a handmaid like Ty Lee. Zuko is looking for her specifically. She's in danger. Her time with Azula had taught her something spectacular though. Keep your enemies close, and make them your friends. She joins Zuko on his little boat. He can't find her if she standing right next to him.


End file.
